As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street vendors, the music of wedding processions, and even the traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street life, while listening to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets.
Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also reveals a political dimension of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes used
Egypt, and the great clamour of urban life
In Street Sounds , Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street life, while listening to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets. In interview he explains his motivations and the value of such analysis
What made you write this book?
Ziad Fahmy: I had the initial idea for
Street Sounds in early 2011, as I was finishing the final revisions of my first book,
Ordinary Egyptians. In it, I had dealt primarily with recorded music, vernacular theatre, and